


For In My Heart I Am Trying To Lie

by OwenToDawn



Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [15]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Grief/Mourning, Internalized racism, Multi, Past Abuse, Past Relationship(s), Post-Golden Deer Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:35:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26194255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OwenToDawn/pseuds/OwenToDawn
Summary: What had he broken himself apart for if not love? Did he shatter everything within himself, break himself down into a tool that Dimitri could use for nothing after all?
Relationships: Claude von Riegan/Dedue Molinaro/Petra Macneary, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro
Series: 15 Day Lyric Challenge 2020 [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882966
Comments: 14
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Today's fic is based on the lyric: 
> 
> “Cause I never loved you/and you never loved me/that’s just how you struck me” from The Charge by Cake Bake Betty. 
> 
> I feel like this song very much fits Dedue. I actually am planning on writing a much longer fic that really gets at this dynamic and internalized racism and recovering from the fake love of people who claim to be our allies. I have a lot of other ideas that are easier to write that I want to finish first. If you read every fic in this challenge thank you! It's been lovely to finally get to writing fics for Fire Emblem again. If you want to see when I did this challenge, but for 30 days across every Fire Emblem game I'd played, you can find that series on my page. 
> 
> Title from the same song. Comments are loved.

It’s under the gentle touch of Petra and Claude that Dedue puts himself back together. Far away from Duscur, far away from Fódlan, he rests on the beaches of Brigid in a small fishing village where Petra and Claude keep a modest vacation home. Most days find them in the capitol, but at least one of them will visit once a week even after he’s settled in and made friends with the townsfolk as best he can. He was hesitant at first.

The original plan was for him to stay a few weeks, so he hadn’t bothered to try and befriend anyone, but then the weeks began to bleed together into months and Dedue found himself reluctant to return to a land that had no desire for him. After the war, after their professor united Fódlan, he’d felt too raw to return to Duscur. So he’d taken Petra’s offer for a break. The people of Brigid knew little about the people of Duscur, but they never viewed him with suspicion, and nowadays, the villagers pester him about inviting more of his countrymen. Their desire to trade food and clothing, unburdened by centuries of conflict, chips away at his grief.

And so too, do Petra and Claude.

It’s not intentional, not at first. Dedue watches the way they interact with each other, the way they tease and laugh, poking fun at one another’s weaknesses before helping. Petra teaches them both how to swim in the ocean and read the currents so they don’t get swept away by the undertow. Claude teaches them beading techniques from Almyra. Dedue and Petra sit on the porch of the house as the sun sets and the waves crash on the shore and they weave thread through colored beads as Claude corrects them here and there. He watches the gentle way Claude guides Petra’s fingers, watches the way Petra smiles in return and looks at Claude like he’s hung the moon in the sky just for her.

He realizes with each visit that such love and adoration, the way they move around each other, their familiarity as they push and pull and guide each other around the house or outside, always touching with such reverence, is something he’s never experienced. He thought he had. In so many ways, Dimitri said he loved him. Swore it. With violence and tears and desperation. And Dedue thought he’d loved Dimitri just as deeply, bending and breaking for him again and again, fighting his own country man on Dimitri’s orders to show the depth of his loyalty and care. And where had it gotten him?

Certainly not here. What had been between them, their kisses and shared touches, had never held the gentleness and adoration he sees between Petra and Claude.

He watches them one night from the porch with something like jealousy and rage in his chest as they lay together on the beach. Petra points up at the sky, doubtless explaining constellations, perhaps the legends that go with them, and he hears Claude laugh as he threads his fingers through Petra’s hair. Had Dimitri ever asked him something so simple? For all his insistence that Dedue treat him as a friend and later a lover, had Dimitri ever asked, even once, about things as silly as Duscurian lullabies or bedtime stories?

It becomes apparent with each passing visit that so much of what he thought was love had not been love at all. The positive memories he’s clung to with such desperation of his time with Dimitri, the memories that made all the abuse hurled at him from classmates and soldiers alike worth it, sour in the face of what genuine care looks like. What had he broken himself apart for if not love? Did he shatter everything within himself, break himself down into a tool that Dimitri could use for nothing after all?

“Dedue?”

So lost in thought, he doesn’t notice Petra and Claude’s approach. When he finally does, they both already stand before him and he feels the grief surge forward all at once and he shields his face from them as he begins to weep. He can’t remember the last time he felt such emotion. Even when he’d found Dimitri’s body, riddled with spears and arrows from Imperial soldiers on Gronder Field, he hadn’t felt like _this_. That had been rage – fury – potent enough to drive him forward to Enbarr on his own.

This is so much worse. This…this is like the last time he’d been in his village as it’d burned around him at the hands of Kingdom soldiers. The last person to see him cry like this had been Dimitri, when they were both still children, and that just makes it worse, makes him sick.

"I’ve been so foolish,” he says once he feels steadier, voice still thick with tears.

A hand touches his shoulder, then slides down to grasp his hand and pull him up to his feet. He stands, and for once, despite his height, he feels small and breakable as he meets first Petra’s gaze and then Claude’s.

“There’s nothing foolish about surviving long enough to heal,” Claude says, his grip tight as he holds Dedue’s hand.

"What…what were you crying for?” Petra asks.

Dedue shakes his head, looking down at his and Claude’s hands. “I have realized that something I thought was love all along was not that at all.”

“Oh…Dedue I…” Claude releases his hand, but Petra’s arms wrap around him a moment later, reaching up his back to clutch at his shoulders as she holds him close. She presses her lips to his scarred cheek, and he can feel her own tears as her breath hitches. “Please just…”

"Come on, both of you,” Claude says.

Claude guides them both back into the house and Dedue feels something hard and cold in his chest begin to warm when he realizes Claude pushes him towards the bedroom with as soft a touch on his back as he has on Petra’s. Could it be so simple? Could it be so easy for one person to embrace and provide comfort in such a simple way? A small touch that carries the weight of being seen?

Petra and Claude pull away their outer clothing, and then Dedue’s, and then they tug him into bed with them. It should be odd. Dedue can’t think of a single time he’s shared his bed, and certainly not like this, certainly not with two people enveloping him in their grip. Petra rests her hand against his bare chest and presses her lips to his collarbone, small reminders that she’s there and sees him, just as she has since the moment she asked him to come home with her. Claude’s arm is firm around his waist, his chest warm at his back, a protective reminder that he’s not alone, but he doesn’t have to hide either.

Vulnerability is something Dedue has only ever saved for when he’s alone. In a hostile land, even the most well-meaning of folks can cause harm, and so it had been easier to just never let anyone see. But over the last few months, in so many small but certain ways, both Claude and Petra had shown him that expressing such weakness for them to see was not something to fear. Now, in their arms with his tears drying on his face, he thinks perhaps it’s not as terrifying as he thought to be truly seen by someone else.

It’s just that there’s never been anyone worthy of seeing him in the first place.

“I thought…he cared for me,” Dedue says.

"He did, in his own way,” Claude says, speaking the words against his neck. “But that doesn’t mean that way was good for you, or true love or care.”

“He asked everything of you and offered only an abstract ideal in return,” Petra says. She shifts so she can look Dedue in the eye, her gaze piercing in the moonlight. “Edelgard never asked me to hurt my own people as he asked you do, but still, the manipulative promises of Fódlan nobles are worth nothing, and the pain of realizing those you cared for did not care for you…” Claude’s hand moves off Dedue’s stomach to touch Petra’s hip, a silent but steady reassurance. “You will be okay Dedue. You are with people who…you are with us. We understand and you are not alone.”

Dedue clings to those word as sleep nips at the heels of his mind. He buries his face in Petra’s hair and cherishes the small kiss Claude leaves at the base of his neck as he repeats it like a mantra in his mind.

He is not alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Art! A dear friend drew these for me - there's two versions because he had the idea of including Dimitri's lance as a physical representation of the trauma that's still hanging over Dedue in this
> 
> I can't decide which one I like more so here we are with both of them
> 
> Hopefully these formatted right because I have never added images to archiveofourown before haha


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